Solar‐assisted geothermal power generation hybrid system from abandoned oil/gas wells

Abstract

Renewable energies need high investment and they have lower efficiency rather than fossil fuels. So methods have to be devised to increase efficiency and to decrease investing cost. Here the combination of geothermal with solar has been proposed. The geothermal heat extraction from an abandoned oil well in Ahwaz oil field (DQ) was simulated and also a binary cycle power plant has been designed. Using this well, the cost of drilling and casing is eliminated. The system is assisted by combining of two solar power production systems. The first system is photovoltaic (PV) which works parallel to geothermal binary cycle. The second system that is concentrated solar thermal (CST) system is using parabolic trough collector to generate heat for super heating geothermal binary cycle. Although CST has more problems than photovoltaic (PV) in terms of setups, maintenance and the ease of transfer, due to the possibility of storing thermal energy when there is no sunlight, it has compatibility and ability to increase more efficiency in collaboration with geothermal binary cycle. The collaboration of CST with geothermal results in 23.5% increase in power generation in a year, while this figure equals to 15.7% for PV with geothermal.